Hell’s Highway (1932)

This is a terrific little film (especially given it’s from 1932) about characters who are sentenced to a chain gang and the terrible conditions they face. Sometimes 1930’s movies suffer from bad music, chattery dialogue and silly distractions but this is a very nice well shot piece of antique cinema. Richard Dix plays the top dog on a chain gang.

The month after this film released the more well known movie “I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” was released by Warner Brothers. That movie portrayed prison conditions from the perception of an innocent man. This one portrays prison conditions from the perspective of guys who are guilty as sin. It was a race. You can tell from the way this film sort of doesn’t quite make the end before it starts to unravel a little bit. Both were intended to portray chain gang conditions as terrible. Both of the movies were pre Hayes code so the content is not as sanitized as you’d find in many of films at the time.

This is a very well done film and you won’t find yourself needing to forgive it for being from 1932.

Readers Comments (10)

It is a really good film. So much of the 30’s stuff was kind of bland emotionally. You end up caring about the characters. Richard Dix does very well as the psychotic who cares about his little brother like he was a puppy.

I kind of wonder if that has something to do with the Hays Code. This is a pre-Hayes code film, and so I think it gets to be itself a little more than what would have been acceptable a few years later.

Pause would probably help you. Just hit pause and get your favorite beverage, pet the dog… something… Come back and it will be buffered. You could also use my email stuff where I’d send you download links.

I want you to get the movie. It’s usually that I can’t count on your local service provider to do it’s job.

If I published download links directly, somebody would just flood my servers by asking for 900 movies in a blink. I’m having this problem with “too slow… too fast”

/me hits head with Tupperware table.

I can put out somewhere around 200 megabits. File grabbers. Please keep this in mind. I could bury me with a few of my home connection. Download 5 at a time, not 50.

Really enjoyed the movie up to the point where Richard Dix returned w his brother rather than escape, and then the movie just stopped – way before the end – and would not finish. Very disappointing. Don’t know how it ended, after watching it all the way through….